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‘Black Box Diaries’ Review: Shiori Ito’s Courageously Candid Documentary Account of Her Own #MeToo Battle

In the remarkable 'Black Box Diaries,' Japanese journalist Shiori Ito tracks her struggle to bring to justice the man who sexually assaulted her.

Amid the surfeit of films about women’s rights and men’s abuses of power that have emerged in the wake of the #MeToo reckoning, we haven’t yet seen one quite like “ Black Box Diaries.” A tightly wound, heart-on-sleeve procedural documentary, Shiori Ito ‘s directorial debut identifies a world of systemic iniquities through the prism of a single, long labored-over case of sexual assault — crucially, the director’s own. That raw first-person perspective, untempered by the interests of another filmmaker and given narrative rigor by Ito’s substantial journalistic skills, makes “Black Box Diaries” not just a damning analysis of patriarchal power structures in contemporary Japan, but a vivid evocation of the day-to-day psychological swings and breaks that come with living as a survivor. Discouraged by both the authorities and her family from taking the matter any further — at potential cost to her reputation and career prospects — Ito nonetheless goes public with her accusations in 2017, pursuing legal action against Yamaguchi and finding a publisher for her tell-all book “Black Box,” a volume intended not just to relay her experience but to prompt a reevaluation of Japan’s archaic sexual assault laws.

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